


calling for your soul

by kingdra (aroceu)



Series: Generosity [20]
Category: SHINee, f(SHINee), f(x)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-04
Updated: 2011-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 07:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroceu/pseuds/kingdra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Breathe in and out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	calling for your soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tionism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tionism/gifts).



Every day it's the same. She wakes up, gets up from her bed, eats breakfast, returns to her bed and sits there. And she thinks.

She thinks, she thinks, she thinks.

She thinks about life. She thinks about death. She thinks about the way her sister would scold her for wasting life here, doing nothing but thinking. She thinks about the way her parents would try to soothe her out, out of her shell, out of her hidden place. She thinks about the way the boy who used to live across the street from her had been friends with her, until that one day when he made fun of her breasts and went to hang out with other boys instead. She thinks about the way all her friends in school had once teased her, had become her friends, and then had left her. She thinks about the way she brings her knees to her chest and keeps them there, like she keeps everything else inside of her heart.

She thinks, she thinks, she thinks.

Rinse, wash and repeat.

Sometimes it hurts. It hurts to think. It hurts to stay here and do nothing. It hurts to be by herself. But it's all she can do, all she knows. With lips like paper and tongue like ice, she folds her life into small little squares, until it's light enough to drift away into the wind.

-

She rarely goes out. Today is a day she decides to go out.

Her school is any other university in Seoul. Big. Prestigious. Empty. It's lined with students in the halls, filing into lines for the classes that she never goes to, exchanging words that she never hears. It's not the type of life she's used to living. It's not the type of life she's needed to live.

It's not the type of life that she wants to live.

She packs away her books in the library (when she's supposed to be somewhere else), and doesn't quite pay too much attention as her flimsy wrist knocks into the body of a boy who had been sitting at the same table as her. She mutters an apology.

The boy looks up and smiles at her and tells her it's okay. She pretends that it's nothing.

Yet she can't forget the light that shone in his eyes as he had spoken.

-

Her heels rock back and forth on the mattress as she thinks. Words run in and out of her mind, the words that she never speaks. They echo in the large space, like melodies of an orchestra filling a room. 

They faint in the distance, but they never cease, they never die out.

Her mind goes from tangent to tangent, place to place, as if she has all the time in the world. She thinks about her classes, and how she's failing. She thinks about her music player, and how it's broken. She thinks about her hair, and how she needs a makeover (and will never get one.) She thinks about the boy that she had run into in the library.

She pauses, and stops. The tip of her heart wants to touch on this thought, wants to spread it with reds and pinks. She lingers; why is she lingering?

She starts up again, and shakes her head. Her heart is not her mind.

-

She learns his name the next day, and pretends she doesn't care. But she doesn't forget how the name had rolled so deliciously off her tongue, like the pit of a cherry.  _Kibum._

He learns her name too. She pretends she doesn't care, but the sound of his saying,  _Krystal_  is replaying over and over in her head, a record lying in the attics of her mind. And she likes it.

They don't run into each other a lot, but she finds that she's making herself run into him. She doesn't even know him. She doesn't know why she's doing this. She doesn't know why she cares. (But she doesn't care. Does she?)

Every time she sees him, though, she finds herself admiring him. For how softly his hair falls into his eyes. For how nimbly his fingers work against each other. For how pretty he looks, on the inside and out.

For how his heart can be seen through the bright gaze he casts upon her.

-

She holes herself up in her room again. Her hair is in a messy bun and it's dark, even though it's midday, and she can't stop thinking.

 _Kibum, Kibum, Kibum,_  is the only thing that is running through her mind, and it's delightful, it's wonderful. But she's trying to push it away and it hurts.

The words flutter like little birds in her mind, and her heart wants to stroke its fingers against them and allow them to delicately land on its palm. But her mind wants to just shove it away, because it's not something to think about. He's not something to think about. He's not something she should think about.

He's not something she should want to think about.

-

_I think you're pretty,_  he tells her.

 _I think you're pretty too,_  she wants to tell him.

Instead, she tells him thank you. She tells him, that's very nice of you. She tells him, shouldn't you be somewhere right now? and stares at him, like there's nothing too important about his words.

He blinks and stares up at her, and she can detect the longing in his eyes, the want in his gaze. She shields her heart with her mind and fills her head with thoughts of the snow and the rain and the sun that Kibum can outshine.

-

He kisses her on a day she doesn't feel bold, she feels weary and weathered and he kisses her like it's the last thing left to do on earth.

She doesn't know what to do. She stops. The book in her hand falls onto the table beneath their arms, and she stays like this, frozen, being kissed. His lips are strangely soft, like pieces of velvet lightly making their way onto a snowy ground. She likes it.

She remembers he had told her that he thinks she's pretty. She remembers that there's something about him that she wants, that she knows she can't have. She remembers how he had slid his way into her mind, into her heart, and she wants him out.

But she doesn't, as she kisses him back and takes his chin into her fingers.

-

They fuck for the first time in his room. She wouldn't be comfortable in her own room. It's her place, for herself, for her mind, and not for anyone else.

She pants and gasps and their fingertips dance with electricity as they press their bodies against each other. Clothes fly off and his small body is suddenly strong, dominating over her, and she allows herself to be fragile, to be broken as they break out into sweats of lust.

When they finish, she falls to the side and thinks of all the things she's ever regretted.

-

Every day, he greets her with a smile as sparkling as a polished dime. Every day, she gives him the briefest of looks and covers her heart with a thin, plastic mask.

She tries to see past him. She tries to see past those winding, black eyes. She tries to see past that thin, delicate frame.

But all she gets is him, and her mind can't wrap its arms around this.

-

He brings her flowers, and says,  _These are marigolds, and they are for you, Krystal._  He smiles and doesn't let go.

She looks at him and then looks down.  _Why?_

 _Because I want to._  He shifts from foot to foot, and everything is so real.  _I just do._

There's something behind those words that she doesn't want to think about. There's something about those words that ring bells in her hearts, bells that she silences. There's something about those words that bring her mind to shame, and hide away, so she is nothing but a hollow shell.

_Thank you,_  she says, and her skeletal hands take his bouquet of everything.

-

He tells her she's beautiful every day, and she wants to take in his words.

She tells herself she's ugly, over and over again until she believes it. 

Her mind is scared, and her heart is abandoning, and she doesn't know who she is anymore. She rocks back and forth in her bed on the days that he tells her she goes missing, and pretends that there are coherent words forming in every corner of her head.

She buries her dry face into her knees.

-

He asks her,  _Do you want to go out with me?_  like there's something to their relationship much more than the sex.

She nods because all other parts of her are numb. She doesn't know why. But there's so little she knows, anyways.

No matter how much she is alone.

He lights up like a winter holiday and tells her,  _Great, I'll pick you up tonight._  He runs off with pink tinges still dangling in his cheeks, and she stares at him.

She thinks about everything she's never regretted.

-

The window reflects the dying rays of the sun onto her bed, spilling over her sheets and smattering over her skin. She pulls her leg back and drifts her gaze along oceans of nothing.

The dress on her body feels like it's for nothing, because she's told herself it's for nothing. She wants it to be for something. She's always wanted it to be for something. But streams of thought have never done anything to her.

She feels beautiful, and knows that she's not. Everything she's ever done has gone to waste.

She imagines that he'd knock on her dorm door. She imagines that he'd see her here. She imagines that she'll say ugly, disgusting words and they'll fall from her ugly, disgusting lips and he'll give her an ugly, disgusting look with his perfect face and leave.

She imagines that he'll abandon her forever.

She doesn't know if she's using her heart or her mind (but  _fuck this_ , maybe she's just being too insecure), but it all goes away when she hears the beats on the outside of her vicinity.

_One, two, three._

The words die in her throat and she has no idea what to say. She has no idea what to do. This is her place, _her_  place. 

Her heart is willing to open it up for him.

She doesn't move, but she wants to. The doorknob clicks, and he says her name. As his eyes meet hers, it feels like every part of her is jumping up and down, bursting and leaping with joy.

_Krystal,_  he says to her, worried eyes gazing upon her imperfect face.  _What's wrong?_

 _I--_  she stutters, and her heart chokes back in her throat and her mind bows down and hides its gaze. She's empty, perhaps alone now.

But she's not alone.

He moves to kiss her eyelids, and it starts the spark within her. His lips drip down to her cheeks, and the flame brews along the grounds. His mouth meets hers, sweet, wet, endearing, and she's burning down into ashes.

He locks her gaze into his own, and she feels the beating of his heart.


End file.
